Q&A: The Unification of the Gods and Occam's Razor
The Unification of the Gods and Occam's Razor
Question
The Rabbi argues in his book that each proof points to a different God: the cosmological argument points to a creator God, the teleological argument points to an intelligent and creative God, the ontological argument points to a great and perfect God, the moral argument points to an ethical God, and tradition points to the religious God. And the only reason we turn them into one is because of Occam's razor.
I have a feeling that it's more than that—that the divine definition has to include everything. Both for a definitional reason, since a perfect God includes all the accompanying perfections (and if He is not perfect, then at least according to the attributes we know to exist, He is contingent and not a necessary being), and also for a logical reason, because if not, the question would arise: who created them, and in what space do they exist?
I would be happy to hear the Rabbi's opinion.
Thank you very much!
Answer
When you examine those arguments one by one, in my opinion you will not be able to infer the unity of the divine beings that emerge from all of them. Here you are raising a different, general argument, which I do not agree with. But in any case, it does not follow from the specific arguments themselves.
There could be a God who is a necessary being and is not perfect, and certainly it is possible that He is not the source of morality. I don't see any necessity in that.
Discussion on Answer
No.
What kind of answer do you want to a bit of pilpul like this, where you've turned every characteristic into an “area”?
Why is that different from an “area” for our purposes?
The point is that there shouldn't be any kind of existence in which He is not present, and present fully, because if He is a necessary being that means He exists in every kind of reality,
Let's say He can lift only up to ten thousand tons and no more. How does that contradict His necessity?
Where does His ability to lift 5,000 tons come from? No one created Him, so who gave Him that power? The answer is that really no one created Him; rather, He is a kind of reality that exists by virtue of itself. And if He is a reality that exists by virtue of itself, then just as He exists with the power of 5,000 tons, so too He exists with more, and in fact exists in every quality and mode of existence infinitely.
In other words, a thing that is a necessary being must also be infinite.
Am I saying nonsense?
In my opinion, yes.
Why? Are my inferences wrong, or do I have some other mistaken assumption?
I don't see an argument, so I can't point to assumptions.
The first assumption is that there is a creator,
which in other words means that no one created Him, because He is the first.
If no one created Him, then how does He exist?
And that leads us to the conclusion that He is a kind of reality that exists by virtue of itself, unlike everything we know, which are realities that exist only because something made them.
And if He exists by virtue of Himself and no one needs to create Him, then the discussion about Him has to be reversed: instead of asking what He is doing here and where He got these abilities from, we should ask the opposite—why shouldn't He have all abilities, and how could He not be found everywhere?
And instead of asking where He would get the power to lift 10,000 tons, we should ask how could He not have it, because He must have it, since He is a kind of reality that exists by virtue of itself and needs no additional condition in order to be everywhere, unlike our reality, which has to be made in order to exist.
In other words, the first assumption regarding a thing that is a necessary being is that it is in every place and in every kind of existence, and the first assumption regarding a reality like ours—which is only contingent and not necessary—is that we do not exist, and for every place and quality in which we do exist we have to ask how we got there.
To say of something that it is a necessary being and must exist is exactly to say of it that it is infinite and “fills all space.”
Really not coherent?!
I don't see any necessity in this:
And if He exists by virtue of Himself and no one needs to create Him, then the discussion about Him has to be reversed: instead of asking what He is doing here and where He got these abilities from, we should ask the opposite—why shouldn't He have all abilities, and how could He not be found everywhere?
And instead of asking where He would get the power to lift 10,000 tons, we should ask how could He not have it, because He must have it, since He is a kind of reality that exists by virtue of itself and needs no additional condition in order to be everywhere, unlike our reality, which has to be made in order to exist.
Every created being has the limitations with which the creator created it, and what exists in the created being is only what the creator put into it. A created being is limited by its very creation, because all it has are the abilities the creator gave it and the limitations within which the creator bounded it.
But in the case of something whose existence, and also the mode of its existence, depends on itself and not on another creator who made it, there cannot be any limitations, for two reasons that are really one:
A. In a superficial way: if its existence depends on itself and it “created” itself, then why would it create itself with limitations? (And even if it limits itself, that isn't a real limitation, unlike the limitations a creator places on a created being, which is genuinely limited by them and does not control them.)
B. The deeper version of A: something that exists by virtue of itself is not a kind of reality like ours, just with an additional ability because of which no one needs to create it.
Rather, the meaning is that something that exists by virtue of itself is a kind of reality such that definitions and limitations do not sustain it; it is only found within them.
In ordinary reality, a thing's definitions and limitations are the basis of its existence. But in the case of a necessary being, the definitions in which it is found are not the basis of its existence, because if we said they were, then it would not be a necessary being—since when the definitions were nullified, its existence would be nullified. And the same reason that compels us to say that even if all definitions were nullified it would still exist also compels that it exists in all kinds of definitions that exist today,
It doesn't depend on itself, just as you can't say of something that it is “the cause of itself.” Nothing is the cause of itself and nothing creates itself. Its nature is what it is, period.
I've exhausted this.
You can't say of anything that it is the cause of itself except for the first cause, which is the Creator, about whom we are forced to say that He is the cause of Himself.
Thank you for the time the Rabbi devoted, and just to be clear, I came to discuss this and not just to state my opinion and leave..
“The cause of itself” is an oxymoron. The Creator has no cause; it's not that He is His own cause.
Completely clear.
Okay, excellent—the Creator doesn't need a cause in order to exist, therefore He is present/exists in all places / qualities / abilities, and that's what I said above: the discussion has to be reversed from why He should have everything to why He shouldn't have everything.
Not at all. He doesn't need a cause, but that doesn't mean He has all abilities. Okay, we're repeating ourselves.
If He exists without a cause—that is, He doesn't need a cause in order to exist—then automatically He exists in every place / ability / quality
I need something to cause me to have the ability to carry a hundred tons; the Creator needs no cause for any ability
How can there be a God who is a necessary being and not perfect?!
If He isn't perfect, that means there is some “area” in which He is not present, which means He is not a necessary being, because if He is a necessary being then how can there be some “area” where He is not present—that is, where He is not necessary.
In other words, “necessary being” is not a technical description of God but an essential description of what God is: something whose existence is from itself and not because someone made it, and therefore He is in every place and in all areas.
Isn't that so?